Ruger Sniper?

[Anonymous]

So I'm looking into getting a bolt gun to set up for long rage shooting and I figured I'd start here and find out what Ruger offers. The furthest I'd be shooting is 600 yards normally.

While I don't see 1000 yards happening very often I'd like to be able to once I step up to the big boy table.

Is there a variation of the M77 that I should start looking at? Although my understanding of MOA is infantile, I'd like to have a gun that gives me the best performance without trying break into extreme professional setups.

Any suggestions would help. (Even if you think I shouldn't go with Ruger, lol.)

 

[southpaw13]

I recently picked up a M77 VLE in .223 that is the most accurate rifle I have ever owned. I have only shot it at 100 yards but would think if you are looking for something at the 600 to 1000 yard mark I would look for one in .308.

 

[hadjii]

The closest thing to a deadly accurate rifle that's not a custom rifle is, and I'm sorry Ruger, but a Remington Sendero in 264 Win Mag. The 264 diameter bullets are the most efficient bullets and have the highest B.C., which means they will retain velocity over longer distances. the 277 diameter and the 284 diameter run close behind. As much as I like Rugers, and I have 2 that I am profoundly fond of, Gordy of Gordy's Gun Shop, who has built literally dozens of Camp Perry National championship rifles for the 1000 yard competition, told me that the Sendero was about as close as you're going to get to a rifle capable of competing in these shoots in a standard factory rifle configuration.

 

[Bob/Olallawa]

The closest thing to a deadly accurate rifle that's not a custom rifle is, and I'm sorry Ruger, but a Remington Sendero in 264 Win Mag.

Now that is a very tall statement. There are lots of bone stock rifles including Ruger I wouldn't want to be standing 1,000 yds. down range of. If you plan to really compete against the big boys though, save up some money and get to know a good smith because none of the stock over counter rifles will do the job.

 

[rugerjunkie]

FN Herstal SPR rifles. Don't need to say much more than that. :wink:

 

[Sig685]

I believe I am the only one on this forum who can talk with authority about shooting a Ruger at 1000, or probably any rifle for that matter. Most people here are into their Mini-14s and rejoice at 3 inch group at 50 yards.

Let me state right up front that you should ignore everything hadjii has said, (s)he is clueless. Nobody shoots the 264 Win mag at 1000 yards. The 277 diameter bullets are totally useless for very long range. Currently the 7mm bullets rule in terms of available bullets with high BC values. The 284 Winchester is the current darling of the F-Open gang, with the 6.5-284 coming in second. The 270 anything is simply not there.

It really depends on what kind of precision you need and how accurate you think you are at long range. I am an NRA classified F-class LR Expert all earned at 1000 yards with a Ruger M77 in .308. I will immediately point out that my M77 is not stock; in fact about the only thing that remains original Ruger in my rifle is the action and the bolt, and the bolt has been reworked. The barrel, stock, trigger, triggerguard and scope rings are all aftermarket. If you do a search on M77 UM, you should find a thread that I started on this rifle. I shoot this rifle in F-class competition every month and I have sent more bullets to 1000 yards in competition than everybody else here, combined.

The barrel is a 32 inch Broughton, with a tight chamber. In this rifle I use handloaded ammunition that uses very high BC bullets in .308. With this setup I am competitive in F-class at 1000 yards. Going from 600 yards to 1000 yards requires an additional 18 MOA of elevation with my load and MV, it will be closer to 20+MOAs for a more normal rifle and available ammunition.

So, if you are looking at shooting to 600 yards, I will make the following suggestions. Ruger makes some very nice rifles now with decent triggers that will take you there, provided you can provide the accuracy. The problem is that you will not be able to shoot too many rounds before the barrel heats up and starts growing your group. Unless you are an accomplished handloader, and even if you are, I would urge you to stick with .308 Winchester, simple because you can find decent factory ammo for it.

If you really want to do well with a Ruger, without going to the extremes that I did, I would suggest you look at the Ruger M77 Mark II Target rifle, model number 17979, in .308 with a 26 inch barrel in a 1:10 twist (KM77VTBBZ MK II). Then you need a nice scope with enough magnification to extract the precision from this rifle to which you will lend your accuracy, I would suggest a scope with a thin reticle and high end magnification greater than 20X. The ammo you want to shoot will either be 168gr ammo for up to 600-700 yards and heavier bullet for longer.

If you truly are interested in this, let me know and I will be happy to give you more info that you would ever want.

Oh, and drop the "sniper" concept.

 

[BlkHawk73]

Well a friend of my brothers spent the long dollar and bought a fancied up FN. Wouldn't keep a group smaller than 6" at 100 yds. It was BAD!

 

[mattsbox99]

According to Sig685, I know nothing about shooting to 600+ yards. I only do that with my WWII Surplus M1 Garand though.

I don't compete with my bolt guns, I shoot steel gongs and plates out to 1000 yards though, now that I finally have a range to do that regularly.

All of my Ruger bolt guns are bone stock, and all of them shoot sub MOA out to 300 yards.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info everyone and Sig.

 

[BlkHawk73]

Okay...I can see this thread getting locked. However, due to recent thread it's not expected to keep such 1-1 arguments in PM's since it's ok if a mod doesn't do it that way. :roll:
Regardless, lets try and avoid the name calling and direct attacks fellas.

If you want such info, I'd find a situational/topical specific forum and inquire. Then agin, why listen to someone that doesn't shoot over 100 yrds.

 

[Sig685]

Why should this thread be locked? Hitting a gong at 1000 yard is fun, but meaningless. We don't even kno the size of the gong, but I'll bet it's bigger than one MOA.

As I explained earlier, you have two concepts here that most people know but do not seem to grasp. You have accuracy, which is what is supplied by the shooter and then you have precision, which is supplied by the rifle/ammo combo. The precision of a rifle grows as you go to larger caliber with bigger bullets providing increasingly high BC values, but then you have to deal with the cost and the recoil/report of such rifles. I can shoot my .308 match rifle all day long, a 66 round match will coast me about $40 in components. Try that with a .338 LM or anything larger and you will be talking over $150 dollars in components or double that in factory ammo.

There are a lot of things to weigh and factor in and most people here simply do not know this stuff, simply because they have not done it. It's not rocket science, but it needs to be experienced. What blkhawk73 says is absolutely right, why would anyone listen to someone who have never shot beyond 100yards when talking about LR shooting?

 

[deadduck357]

Try the M77 Mark II Target chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor

http://ruger.com/products/m77MarkIITarget/models.html

 

[Sig685]

That is a great recomendation, and I like the Creedmoor, but I just do not know if it will be around a few years from now. Also, I do not believe that Winchester and Remington offer this ammo in factory loads; I believe it's only from Hornady. If you handload, then you can go ahead and go for it. If you are not a handloader, caveat emptor.

 

[hadjii]

Sig685, first off let me say this. Gordy Gribbons He is one of the top gunsmiths in the entire midwest, and yes that is a tall statement, however it is true. I didn't say the 264 win mag was shot in 1000 yard matches. I didn't say that the Remington Sendero was a capable rifle for the 1000 yard matches, what I said was that for a standard configuration rifle, the Sender was about as good as you can get. In other words, a factory rifle, out of the box, no modifications. That comes from Gordy Gribbons. His rifles built for the 1000 yard matches cost upwards of $6000 for a reason. The 6.5-284 is what he builds more of than anything for the long shoots, at least the last time I talked to him that was the case. Your Creedmore doesn't offer anything special. Just as well shoot the 260 remington. Perhaps you should call Gordy of Gordy's Gun Shop in Pella, Iowa. You'd find out quick that you don't know as much as you are blowing about knowing. You talk so much about shooting the big distances. So what. How many terrorists have you shot lately? How many times have you been shot at by a terrorist lately? Your 1000 yard shoots don't mean crap when you have somebody shooting at you trying to blow your head off. I can definitely testify to the above satements. Right now, as we speak, I'm in the middle of the big freakin desert for the 3rd time. Why don't you come over here and follow me around for awhile.

 

[mattsbox99]

I have the 6.5 Creedmoor, I like it a lot. I haven't played with it much due to my pistol season being in the spring, summer, and early fall.

I like Remingtons, and I own several of them, including several that I have built. One thing is for sure, Remington's barrels are total junk. I mean that, they might shoot okay, but I've seen more squashed lands and tooling marks in one Remington barrel than in all of my Rugers, and that was a factory new Remington 700. It did clean up enough with some hand lapping, and it shoots pretty well, but was an atrocious fouler before lapping.

Anyway, I'm out of this thread, because I know how its going to turn out.

 

[dfletcher]

FN Herstal SPR rifles. Don't need to say much more than that. :wink:

I have an SPR with an Ops Inc brake on it and it is a very nice rifle. But my Ruger 77V in 6.5 Creedmoor is just as accurate & has a better trigger.

I've been burned a few times on Rugers that don't shoot well - a 77 in 223, a No 1 in 7 Rem Mag, a Mini 14 (what a shock!) and a 77/44 - so I'm pretty receptive to the general notion that Ruger has or had a rep for not being consistently good shooters. I've had only 1 Remington 700 that shot poorly out of the box and free floating took care of that one. But the 77V line, in my experience, is very much under rated and are as accurate out of the box as any other similar rifle in their price range. Just my experience.

 

[Sig685]

I agree with you, the VT models from Ruger are very nice. About the only problem with these rifles for the long range is the inability to use a standard 20 MOA base. I had to go with an arrangement from Burris including Weaver base adaptors and Signature Zee rings. If someone were to come out with a 20 MOA base that fits the Ruger M77, that would be really nice.

Hadjii, thanks for your service; Gordy may know a thing or two about LR shooting, nobody disputes that, or cares. I was just saying that you do not know anything about it.

At any rate, the thread was about using Ruger rifles for long range shooting and I think many agree with my recommendation of a Ruger M77 VT model. It's up to the OP to decide whether a 6.5 Creedmoor is a better choice than a .308. My preference is for the .308 especially since the 77 is in a 1:10 twist which will allow the use of long for caliber bullets in this rifle, all the way to a 210SMK or a 208 A-Max. I use 180gr JLK LBTs in my match rifle for 1000 yard comps, I can bring them to 2850FPS with my long barrel.

 

[Sig685]

I should also point out that since this is a Ruger enthusiasts site, and the OP was asking if a Ruger product could fill his needs, I find it a bit, shall we say bizarre, to recommend other brands instead of Ruger.

However, rest assured that if no Ruger product would have met the needs of the OP, I would have been the first one to say so. As people know, I am not afraid of controversy with respect to Ruger products, (think Mini-14, the biggest POS from Ruger,) but in this case, the M77 VT Target model will do a great job.

 

[Xelera]

If he is new to long range shooting, .308 is almost mandatory. Gonna be spending alot of time shooting to get good, and a .308 can put 5k-8k rounds through a barrel before it's shot out. 6.5x284 and the like tend to be barrel burners at 1-2k rounds.

.308 has some incredible factory match ammunition if you aren't into reloading yet, and so many known recipes for hand loading, you almost get to start accurate and tweak from there.

There are other factory rifles that can reach 1k out of the box (Savage 10FP, Remington 700P or 700PSS, a Remington 700 5R mil-spec, and even some standard 700 tacticals or varmints if you get a decent one). You can spend a bit more on a factory Sako TRG or Accuracy International. But this is all contrary to the question, can you do it with a Ruger...

As to whether or not a given caliber bullet can hit 1k, it's more important to ask what you want to do when you get it there. Some lower BC bullets, or underpowered ammo, might get there, but it strike the target sideways even. Hunting or "sniping" at 1k yards is a bit different than shooting paper.

That leads to the purpose of the scope. If you are benchrest shooting, yes, like the posters above said, get the thinnest reticle and highest power possible. If you are using your rig to double for hunting, you want about 1x magnification for hundred yards, so you retain some decent field of view. That means you could conceivably shoot 600 yards with a 6x scope. Most decent tactical scopes are in the 3-9x, 4-14x, 5-15x range. For weight considerations, you may want to go with a 42mm, 44mm, or 50mm objective (56-60 are usable for BR and give good light gathering, but you have to lug the gun around if its for anything other than benchrest shooting).

Also, if you are using this as an all purpose rig, you don't want to lug a 30" heavy barrel through the woods. You can get to 1k with .308 on a 20" barrel, though you do lose some bullet velocity, as compared to a 24-26" standard barrel.

The twist of the barrel also matters. A .308 can be stabilized with a 1:12 twist, though you will probably be limited to 168gr bullets (175 maybe, but dependant on each guns unique quirks).

If you haven't figured it out by now, for your first long range gun, it should be a 308. Everything is a trade-off. Carryability for velocity, wider field of view for less magnification. Long barrel life for lower BC caliber chamberings.

Some good caliber discussions and information at several sights:
http://www.6mmbr.com/index.html
http://demigodllc.com/articles/practica ... equipment/

Oh, and get ready to spend some money...

 

[BlkHawk73]

I should also point out that since this is a Ruger enthusiasts site, and the OP was asking if a Ruger product could fill his needs, I find it a bit, shall we say bizarre, to recommend other brands instead of Ruger.

Just because it's a Ruger forum doesn't mean there aren't other, sometimes better options.